[Fenrir and Reinward are in the Dismal Caverns doing a quest on behalf of Xama the Priestess of Ghaunadaur.]
DAY 677 (9th Hammer)(January)
In the morning (note this dear reader, there was no night and day in this realm of caverns and tunnels, but it was about ten in the morning back on the Material Plane) they were taken into the ziggurat and then to a large chamber that had been carved out of the living rock before the entrance of the gauntlet.
Here, their guide, a beholder called Borkulax the All-Seeing, seeing that there were only two of them offered them some help. For a share of the loot they could hire:
- a man-shaped ooze fighter called Brodok
- a woman-shaped ooze druid called Cartet Mukor
- a bucket of ooze known as Abriska who was apparently a scholar
Another note dear reader; Although I was not there, I find this area very interesting and have done some research.
Ghaunadaur, the Elder Eye, was once a member of the Drow Pantheon, and has only very recently retreated to the Dismal Caverns from the Demonweb Pits. The bards say he was fed up with the machinations of the drow goddess Lolth and slunk away in order to rebuild his worshiper base.
This means that the Dismal Caverns is now the afterlife destination of most beholder, illithid, and troglodyte petitioners and all this accounted for the areas around the ziggurat that looked like a refugee camps.
Anyway, Reinward wanted to haggle over how much the three oozes would be paid, but Abriska told them that it was a take-it-or-leave-it offer. In the end they decided to take all three of them.
Abriska also offered them a Resurrection Insurance Policy of 5000 gold (on top of the cost of the Resurrection) for a no-fuss revival outside the Gauntlet in the case of it all going wrong.
After one last meal, there was nothing left to do, and in they went!
As far as I understand it the Gauntlet of Zhaeryx is a series of caverns chock full of nasty monsters. The people taking part in the challenge will first meet small and easily defeated monsters, then slightly stronger, then stronger yet until they are very powerful and the contestants meet their match and presumably get killed.
As a result of this, the first caverns they breezed through. Giant centipedes, Chokers, a Doppleganger, Troglodyte Zombies.
And on they went, next were Were Rats. One tried to surrender. Fenrir killed it after questioning. After some oozes, things started to get a bit tougher. There were undead Minotaurs, followed by a Greater Shadow.
A cave full of centipede swarms was dealt with by Elditch Cones from Fenrir.
They were ten caverns into the Gauntlet now and things were getting more serious. A large chamber full of animated rock monsters was the first to see them injured. Fenrir was hurt by flying stones, which made Reinward run back. The monsters were defeated efficiently enough, but Fenrir needed healing from all the clobberings he had received.
The next cavern was home to a gang of Destrachans. Brodok and the others were ordered to hold back and Fenrir and Reinward went forward. Fenrir went in but saw that Reinward was hanging back, his knees trembling. He'd seen the piles of bones at the cave entrance.
'Err, I forgot my tools! I'm going back for them!'
'Get your arse in here!' called back Fenrir.
It was not too challenging a combat in the end. The destrachans did their best but were easily defeated in the end. One tried to hide among the stalagmites at the back of the cave, but was hunted down and slain.
No comments:
Post a Comment